


Hot Coals

by teaandhemlock



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Drabble, Fluff and Hurt/Comfort, Kinda?, M/M, Not Beta Read, if you squint maybe, mentions of Crowley being a snake
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-10
Updated: 2019-07-10
Packaged: 2020-06-25 22:50:37
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,798
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19755361
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/teaandhemlock/pseuds/teaandhemlock
Summary: Crowley’s movements were fluid and his eyes perpetually hidden and so someone less accustomed to his company wasn’t very likely at all to see the subtle changes. The way he would shift his weight more often, the subtle clenching of his jaw when he put too much weight one way or the other. An occasional very quiet hiss. Easily missed if you weren’t aware your company was prone to making such a sound.Aziraphale was very aware of all of these things. This was why he was also very aware that since a very memorable night in the 1940s the demon he kept company with had never quite walked the same.(Just a little drabble set after Armageddon't as the two of them negotiate new boundaries and try to fill the gaps)





	Hot Coals

**Author's Note:**

> I haven't written fic in years but here I am. I just wanted to write a few hundred words and then this all sort of spiraled out of my control and here we are. I'm very nervous to be writing for something I love so much but I love these idiots too much to not throw this out into the world. I'm not certain I've got a hold on Crowley and Aziraphale's voices just yet but hopefully it's alright.
> 
> This is essentially just these two being sort of Soft. It is very self-indulgent but hopefully someone else likes it too!
> 
> Hopefully the footnotes work, this is my first attempt at using them.

Mostly inhabiting a human form for six millennia does not make Crowley any less a serpent. For this reason his generally preferred form does come with a few peculiarities. There’s the obvious of course- his yellow and slitted eyes. Then there are the traits that Aziraphale finds quite endearing.  The sounds that get drawn out into a hiss under a variety of circumstances[1]. How Crowley seeks out heat, even if he won’t admit to it. The way he sprawls out in sunny spots. 

The second obvious thing that gives Crowley away as perhaps being just the tiniest bit incompatible with his usual physical form is his walk. There’s nothing really wrong with it only that Aziraphale can’t quite figure out how he manages to give off a sense of slithering while possessing far more limbs than one would need for such a method of propulsion. Most people don’t pay much mind to the way the demon’s whole body seems to sway as he moves, writing it off as something decidedly mundane.Perhaps that’s the case and Aziraphale has simply read too much into it[2]..

The why is besides the point. The point is that Crowley has an eye-catching way of using his feet to get from point A to point B and Aziraphale spends perhaps too much time noticing it. Spending so much time watching Crowley get around meant that Aziraphale had become very adept at picking up on subtle differences that meant something was probably not quite right. Minor injuries, normally, or just sore feet [3]..

Crowley’s movements were fluid and his eyes perpetually hidden and so someone less accustomed to his company wasn’t very likely at all to see the subtle changes. The way he would shift his weight more often, the subtle clenching of his jaw when he put too much weight one way or the other. An occasional very quiet hiss. Easily missed if you weren’t aware your company was prone to making such a sound.

Aziraphale was very aware of all of these things. This was why he was also very aware that since a very memorable night in the 1940s the demon he kept company with had never quite walked the same. 

Well. Perhaps _very _aware was the wrong way to put it. What with the way that everything had gone down in the church Aziraphale had assumed at the time that Crowley had prepared some method to handle the damage the consecrated ground would deal to his feet. They didn’t see each other for a few years after that (a disappointment to be explored on its own time) and while Aziraphale might have noticed signs of discomfort here and there he never linked them.Not consciously, at least[4].__

____

____

Then Armageddon didn’t happen and things changed. _They _changed. And Aziraphale started to ask questions. Crowley did as well [5]. It was a slow testing of new boundaries, hesitantly reaching out into the dark expecting to feel the teeth of some unseen beast and then relaxing when they realised the beast had never actually existed. __

____

____

It was a few months into them settling into this new normal that Aziraphale found a chance to finally link those observations and the courage to voice that link. 

They were enjoying a quiet night in the back of the bookshop, sitting on a couch that should by all rights have had it’s stuffing completely compressed by years of use now. [6] Well, _Aziraphale _was sitting on the couch, properly upright and with a book in his hands. Crowley was sprawled across the rest of it with his feet on Aziraphale’s lap, ankles crossed. His sunglasses were on the coffee table in front of them and though his eyes were closed Aziraphale didn’t think he was actually sleeping just yet.__

____

____

It had been a peaceful day. They’d met for dinner and strolled around the neighbourhood until retiring to the bookshop. Wine might have been on the schedule at one point but neither of them had held to that once they were settled. The stroll was what was important. It was what had brought the line of thought back into the forefront of his mind. He'd seen the signs again that Crowley wasn't quite comfortable walking around for all that long and had decided to finally put it all together.

“My dear, are you still awake?” Aziraphale carefully put a bookmark between the pages and set his book to the side, turning his full attention on the demon. Crowley cracked open one eye in response, just a sliver of yellow and black. It brought a soft smile to Aziraphale’s lips, at which point Crowley thought it safe to shut his eye again. “There’s something I’ve wondered about, you see, and I’d hoped you might indulge a question or two.” With nothing to do with his hands one of them came to rest on Crowley’s ankles, which showed no signs of moving from his lap any time soon. 

“Ask away, angel.” Crowley gave a little wave of his hand along with the consent though made no move to sit up or look even slightly more attentive. No matter. The angel knew he had his attention and that was what was really important. 

“It’s about that incident in the church. With the books and the Nazis. Which I am still ever so grateful for, dear boy.” The demon’s ankles were rewarded with a friendly pat which was not enough to stop the being from tensing up, just ever so slightly. 

“Couldn’t go and let you get discorporated, could I? Would have been years with you Upstairs tied up in paperwork and just me down here. Would have been horrendously boring.” _I would have missed you, _goes unspoken but both of them understand it to be there. Crowley is not yet at the point he’s comfortable just saying things like that and Aziraphale is nothing if not infinitely patient. Now that he knows what he’s looking for it’s easy to read between the lines anyway. “What about it?” His eyes were open now. Gold in the light of the room, stunning as always. Aziraphale only wished they weren’t hidden away so much of the time.__

____

____

“Well it was awfully bold of you, wasn’t it? Coming onto consecrated ground for my sake. It didn’t look particularly comfortable at the time.” 

“Wasn’t so bad,” Crowley interjected with a small shrug of his shoulders. “Figured there was a chance I would’ve just burst into flames. Hot feet were much more manageable than that would have been.” There it was, part of the answer being offered up before Aziraphale had even asked.

“Do you mean to say you came onto consecrated ground to fetch me, without knowing exactly what would happen to you?” The tone he took was just off the mark from scolding. Absolutely in the realm of concerned. Crowley had the decency to pull himself up into something that resembled sitting a little more closely, his feet sliding from Aziraphale’s lap as he did so. 

“We don’t deal in exacts all too often do we, angel? Not a lot of demons decide to risk taking a stroll on church grounds just to see what’s going to happen. I was pretty sure it wasn’t going to be enough to discorporate me. Anyway I turned out fine, didn’t I?” He spread his arms as he said it, gesturing to his body before dropping them along the back and arm of the couch. Lounging, as he always did. “Both of us did.”

“Did we? Did _you _?” The concern was practically dripping from his voice. The look he was giving the demon wasn’t any better. His brow was pinched, he looked almost pained. Blue eyes met yellow and he saw Crowley twitch. Just for a moment, just beginning to move away from the couch. For his sunglasses, Aziraphale realised once the action had been aborted. It hadn’t escaped his notice that Crowley wore them to hide more than just the serpentine quality of his eyes. “I do have eyes, you know. I can tell when you’re in pain.”__

____

____

“I’m not in _pain _!” Crowley was sitting up a little straighter, drawing himself a little further towards his own side of the couch and putting space between them. He couldn’t meet Aziraphale’s eyes for more than a few seconds before he would avert his own again, desperately trying to find somewhere to settle his gaze that would seem casual. Trying, and failing. They were working on this. On letting down boundaries and letting the other in. Instinct still kicked in sometimes. They were, after all, hereditary enemies. It wouldn’t make any sense to go around telling your enemy your weaknesses. But Aziraphale _wasn’t _Crowley’s enemy and he waited patiently for the demon to settle down and remind himself of that.____

__

__

____

____

It didn’t take long. After a bit more anxious squirming around and awkward silence Crowley let himself sprawl out again. He still couldn’t hold Aziraphale’s gaze but he was trying to. The angel had shifted from concern to quiet encouragement. Knowing eyes and a gentle smile. Letting Crowley decide to speak on his own time. 

“I’m not in pain,” he repeated, when he was ready. His eyes flitted up to Aziraphale’s face and then off to some fascinating point on the far bookshelf. “Just a bit uncomfortable, on occasion. S’not so bad these days,” he added, whether to reassure himself or Aziraphale neither could be sure. 

“May I see?” It was a question and Aziraphale made very certain his tone conveyed that. There would be no consequence for refusing. 

“Prefer you didn’t,” Crowley admitted, hardly above a mumble, after a few stretched out moments of silence. 

“Then I won’t.” That was that, asked and answered. Aziraphale made to pick up his book again having decided he shouldn’t push Crowley further that night. They were still learning where the boundaries were. There would be time to learn. The angel was another four pages into his book before Crowley fully relaxed. He shifted slowly into his previous position, sliding down further until he wasn’t really sitting any longer. It was another two pages before he brought his feet back up to Aziraphale’s lap again. He didn’t look up from the pages but he did smile and rest a hand on the demon’s ankle again. 

They stayed like that for a while. Settling into the same quiet peace as before. Aziraphale didn’t know how many more pages it was before he heard Crowley again [7].

“Thanksss.”

It was quiet and the way the last sound was drawn into that occasional hiss made Aziraphale’s whole chest feel warm.

“There’s no reason to thank me, my love. I don’t need to know everything now. We’ve got all the time in the world.”

**Author's Note:**

> 1Aziraphale keeps a mental catalogue of all the reasons Crowley might start to let his hiss slip. The most recent cause had been a most delightful surprise.[return to text]  
> 2He has not. Crowley had taken a while to get the hang of having so many limbs and perhaps had not given himself the correct number of vertebrae. This might have had something to do with his inability to sit properly in a chair as well. By the time he’d figured out how to do it all properly the demon had grown attached to the slight sense of drama it gave him and the attention it won him and so he’d simply never bothered to correct himself[return to text]  
> 3Neither of which they should really be able to have, or that they shouldn’t be able to dispense with without much effort. Aziraphale had never given much thought as to ‘why’. He'd had an aversion to questioning, something he was only now beginning to regret.[return to text]  
> 4To link them would have brought questions. Questions that crossed the boundaries of the Arrangement that they had both been pushing at for years now. It was safer not to wonder.[return to text]  
> 5Crowley had always asked questions just never the ones he needed the answers for. At least not if the questions involved a certain angel.[return to text]  
> 6 Aziraphale did not realise that this should be the case though and so it remained as comfortable as it had always been.[return to text]  
> 7 This was not true. It had been 80.[return to text]  
> I've got plans to write more Good Omens stuff but I'm in the middle of dissertation season and shouldn't have even taken the time to write this so who knows! In the meantime I can be found on tumblr at teaandhemlock or on twitter at @blightedprince where I will continue to shout about Good Omens until God Herself stops me. Comments are appreciated! Hope you enjoyed!


End file.
